IdyllopusPress Presents

How to not be a reporter (or gossip, whichever)

My brother-in-law who lives out of town, was hanging out yesterday, as part of his job, with Trent Lott who was boosting his book.

There was a question and answer session.

Trent Lott isn’t really impresed with Miers (which we already know). He said couldn’t the president have picked someone who was a judge and tried at least one case. He said he advised the president a woman would be a good choice. Said the problem is not that she’s one of his staffers, that’s the way things are. She just has no experience as a judge.

He was asked did he think Frist would be the Republican nominee in 2008? He said he didn’t think Frist would have the support. He was asked would he vote for Bill Frist? He doubted Frist would be the nominee but if he is then “we’ll have to see what happens” or some such as that.

He thought Condi running against Clinton would be interesting.

That’s what he was telling the folk in Mississippi. And he talked about Katrina, his house having been destroyed and all.

My brother-in-law says they got along real well and that he didn’t think Trent knew he was a liberal which he thought was a good thing considering he was hanging out with Trent Lott as part of his job. When he was able to answer what the Constitution says it takes to be a Supreme Court Judge (Lott sprung a surprise quiz on his elves-in-waiting), Trent said oh had he studied constitutonal law and asked him why he quit pursuing his PHD. My brother-in-law says a picture was taken of him with Trent Lott and he will get that on Monday. Maybe if someone anyone says pretty please can we see the photo then I can cajole my brother-in-law into passing along the photo for the blog.

I was a bad reporter and asked what was OK for me to put in the blog, which means the only interesting thing Lott had to say, which was in private,will go unwritten.

Sadly, this is the kind of significant event in our lives that merited a phone call.

Brother-in-law: How you doing? We haven’t talked in a while.

Me: We’re OK.

Brother-in-law: I hung out with Trent Lott today.

The fun times are a-rolling.

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Juli Kearns

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Comments

2 responses to “How to not be a reporter (or gossip, whichever)”

  1. Jim McCulloch Avatar
    Jim McCulloch

    Kay taught me to be aware of how weird our kinship system is, where a brother-in-law can be either your spouse’s brother, or your sister’s husband, and, in American common usage, but not so commonly in Britain, your spouse’s sister’s husband.
    Consequently, I have a bunch of brothers-in-law (assuming a deceased spouse’s kin remain one’s own) and a couple of ex-brothers-in-law provided by one of Kay’s maritally impulsive sisters, but alas, none ever call me with any gossip. Kay’s closest sister _does_ call me occasionlly with gossip, but it always has to do with neighborhood or family quarrels, nothing that would be newspaper worthy, unless it got out of hand and the police were called.

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  2. Idyllopus Avatar
    Idyllopus

    I realized after posting I’d left out a step in relationship clarification. He’s a brother of my husband. And yes, if he was married I would consider his wife to be a sister-in-law. I have also my very own ex-brother-in-law who I wouldn’t know on the street if I passed him by, haven’t seen him in twenty years but I would consider a relation as he had a child with a sister of mine. Now, if they hadn’t had a child I would probably not think of him as still being a relation, unless he had been close to the family. If they’d not had a child and he had been with my sister a long while I would consider him a relation and/or if he had been close to any other member of the family or stayed in touch with the family in general I would still consider him a relation. It does get fuzzy.

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